Synopsis

Fifteen-year-old Amari witnesses the murder of her family and the destruction of her remote African village. She endures countless humiliations as she is beaten, branded, and forced to board a slave ship. The atrocities continue as she struggles through endless days of backbreaking work and daily degradation on a plantation. Somehow, through it all, Amari's hopes and dreams survive because there are moments of kindness from an indentured white girl, Polly and the gentle wife of the plantation owner. Amari and Polly find that by working together freedom could be possible. Award-winning author and educator Sharon M. Draper, known for her popular, contemporary teen novels, successfully tackles historical fiction and received starred reviews from Booklist and the School Library Journal. In this well-researched novel, Draper explores the inter-relationships of those who live on a plantation. "Draper builds the explosive tension to the last chapter, and the sheer power of the story, balanced between the overwhelmingly brutal facts of slavery and Amari's ferocious survivor's spirit, will leave [listeners] breathless, even as they consider the story's larger questions about the infinite costs of slavery and how to reconcile history."-Booklist, starred review